So this 19 year old's first and only question is "Why do girls do so much stuff with their hair when guys don't even care or notice."

I snorted loudly and said really slowly, "We don't do it for you."

Which, I think I get bonus points for at least some kindness and not immediately launching into a rant, right? Anyway he had no idea how to respond to that, like it hadn't even -occurred- to him that women might do things for reasons not completely revolving around men's opinions.

He's just a teen, I tell myself, he's a kid, a -baby-, don't get mad, just tell him the way of things.

Anyway, I left shortly after that. I only have so much control. I guess the moral of the story is that it's sometimes easy to forget what it was like to be that age. I mean I'm going to continue treating people who can speak like adults as adults because condescending to them won't help anything, but I need to remind myself over and over again that when I was that age, I appreciated kindness. The least I can do is pay it back.

To be fair for most guys the only reason to do any personal grooming is because of women. Your answer literally doesn't make any sense, who else would you be doing it for?_________________

ultimately oneself, but the particulars are dependent on a desire to project a particular image to society in general

and I'd hazard a guess that this is ultimately true of anyone's grooming that goes beyond basic comfort (like, having long unwashed hair is physically painful to me - ouch, my scalp) and cleanliness, regardless of whichever groups they're trying to give whatever impression, or which groups they use to justify their behavior

but hey, maybe not, I'm just one person, and I'm perhaps not the best at digging out the true motives from beneath other people's self-justifications

buuuuuut,

Quote:

for most guys the only reason to do any personal grooming is because of women

@HR: I think they are weird too. But considering the topic is about an MRA subreddit, I didn't see the need to bring that up (in fact, this has been discussed before, did you mention MRAs back then as well?). Just because some feminists do it too means that some MRAs can get away with it._________________

if you don't want it compared to feminism then don't post about it in the feminism thread

and last I checked the mrm hasn't actually gone and marched against gay rights, so they're ahead of feminism in that regard, for all that they're a reactionary mirror of everything bad about the movement_________________butts

here, this article might be relevant, as a study in mra attitudes -- it was written by an MRA who doesn't support gay marriage because he doesn't support any form of the legal institution of marriage. He sees it as a further campaign for subjugation by the state, "a capitulation to recognizing the state, not the individual, as the ultimate authority over human relationships."

based on some of his justifications for this view, my guess is that MRAs are more likely to hold this particular position than the general population

you can't just jump to conclusions about why someone answered in a particular way on a yes/no survey, much like you can't take a complete lack of a response as a 'no', though of course a fraction of them probably did answer that way for what I would consider to be despicable reasons_________________butts

ultimately oneself, but the particulars are dependent on a desire to project a particular image to society in general

and I'd hazard a guess that this is ultimately true of anyone's grooming that goes beyond basic comfort (like, having long unwashed hair is physically painful to me - ouch, my scalp) and cleanliness, regardless of whichever groups they're trying to give whatever impression, or which groups they use to justify their behavior

but hey, maybe not, I'm just one person, and I'm perhaps not the best at digging out the true motives from beneath other people's self-justifications

buuuuuut,

Quote:

for most guys the only reason to do any personal grooming is because of women

I really, really doubt this

ace men still groom themselves

I'm talking of course about grooming beyond basic comfort and particularly younger men. Nobody wants to be seen as a smelly bum but more than that?_________________

ultimately oneself, but the particulars are dependent on a desire to project a particular image to society in general

and I'd hazard a guess that this is ultimately true of anyone's grooming that goes beyond basic comfort (like, having long unwashed hair is physically painful to me - ouch, my scalp) and cleanliness, regardless of whichever groups they're trying to give whatever impression, or which groups they use to justify their behavior

but hey, maybe not, I'm just one person, and I'm perhaps not the best at digging out the true motives from beneath other people's self-justifications

buuuuuut,

Quote:

for most guys the only reason to do any personal grooming is because of women

I really, really doubt this

ace men still groom themselves

I dress to make straight men look bad.

And also because it's one of the few ways I can make up for hating my body, and feeling inferior for it. They may be cis but I'm wearing a fancy tie! Ha...

here, this article might be relevant, as a study in mra attitudes -- it was written by an MRA who doesn't support gay marriage because he doesn't support any form of the legal institution of marriage. He sees it as a further campaign for subjugation by the state, "a capitulation to recognizing the state, not the individual, as the ultimate authority over human relationships."

based on some of his justifications for this view, my guess is that MRAs are more likely to hold this particular position than the general population

First of all, this is on freaking A Voice For Men, written by king of "fuck their shit up" Paul fucking Elam. It has goddamn links in the immediate sidebar with titles like "Menstrual pain makes women stupid? Oh, let's put menstruating women in positions of power then." and "New fathers suffer depression, too. But only women are screened. And infanticide laws apply only to women? Seems legit." with a link to this which one, has absolutely nothing about infanticide, so why he mentions it in the title is a mystery. Secondly, due to the ordering of the sentences, he makes it out like men have been purposely glossed over and that women are always screened and given help. Maybe it's because of gender stereotypes (that, yanno, feminists are trying to break down) of women as primary caregiver and men as stoic distant breadwinners that it's taken so long for whoever looks into things to realise that men might also be affected by stuff like having a kid? And thirdly, it curiously does not mention anything about this part:

Quote:

The majority of these fathers lived in the same home as their children. Young fathers who did not live with their children did not experience such a dramatic increase in depressive symptom scores in early fatherhood, the study found. Instead, these non-residential fathers’ depression symptom scores were elevated before fatherhood and start to decrease during early fatherhood, though this sample is smaller in number. Residential fathers’ depression symptom scores were lower before fatherhood and then dramatically increased after the birth of a child and into early fatherhood.

In other words, fathers who leave their kids don't feel at all sad about it.

But to the article.

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On a political level, some of the resentment is understandable. Gay activists have aligned themselves with feminists, and, while marching in misandric lockstep, have draped themselves in victim couture and made their grab for special government considerations. The resultant draconian intrusions and bullying on behalf of gays and other special interest groups is a core issue in the men’s movement, and for good reason.

Honestly, anything that uses "misandric lockstep", "victim couture" and "bullying on behalf of gays" in the second fucking paragraph doesn't inspire me to want to read the rest of it, or really do anything but wish I could punch the author in the face.

Honestly holy fuck why did you link this article it's terrible.

Quote:

Gay men have invented new technology, built cities, researched cures for disease, made profound contributions to the arts, literature and philosophy, excelled at athletics and participated wholly in every aspect of the development of civilization as we know it.

But of course, they did not do these things because they were gay. They did these things because they were men. Solving problems and making advances is what men do, and there is no evidence to suggest that gay men are any less proficient at it than straight men.

I don't think I can handle AVFM straight from the source.

Quote:

By embracing feminist ideology and misandry, gay men only buy into the myth that they are not, and shouldn’t be, men. And by allowing themselves to be co opted by a group of ideologues that hate men to the core, they have only further undermined solutions to their very real problems.

*embracing misandry intensifies*

Quote:

Also, and I don’t think this can be understated, pushing for legal recognition of gay marriage is a de facto endorsement of statist culture; a capitulation to recognizing the state, not the individual, as the ultimate authority over human relationships.

So I had to dig through a metric ton of shit just to get to some "relationships shouldn't be legitimised by the state" which I've seen discussed by feminists and actual humanists (btw MRAs are not actually humanists, unless you exclude women from "human" as they like to do) and queer people in far more nuanced and personal ways?

Quote:

When newspaper stories cover gay weddings, they always run them with accompanying pictures of the happy couple(s), and some not so thinly disguised commentary about people finally realizing dreams, of being included in “normal” society. What those newspapers won’t do is run follow up stories, complete with pictures of dueling attorneys, confiscated property, false allegations, ex parte restraining orders, garnished wages and jail cells for those that don’t comply.

Well if they're famous gay people they certainly will. I've seen more than one image macro of "can you imagine how dramatic a gay divorce would be".
Also I bolded "false accusations" just to inform you that since I am regrettably far too informed about Paul Elam's opinions, he believes that women pretty much always lie about rape and has said:

Paul Elam wrote:

Should I be called to sit on a jury for a rape trial, I vow publicly to vote not guilty, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the charges are true.

It would seem sensible that since marriage, at least in western culture, is a religious institution,

Except atheists get married so no?

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is a religious institution, that men -all men- push for taking it out of the hands of government completely. Religious institutions would be able to marry whomever they please, which would ensure the rights of almost anyone to marry- and to suffer for it down the road.

But much better that suffering be a simple artifact of broken dreams than the for-profit destruction of lives routinely inflicted by family courts.

Family courts are a war zone, but they are nothing compared to the real thing.

I was not expecting that segue.

Quote:

In the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the total count for American dead and wounded is 43,459. This number does not include the 16+ war veterans who kill themselves each and every day. 98%+ of these dead and wounded are men, by design.

And who designed the system? Men. Because they thought women were too fragile and incompetent for combat.

Quote:

Selective service is a boys club. Straight or gay, you are required to register or face time in jail. It is only women who are exempt. And if there were ever a draft again, it would be men and only men conscripted, with or without their consent.

We're not getting another fucking draft and if there was one, it would likely include women seeing as women have been trying to get into combat too.

Quote:

We do have a draft of sorts, by the way. It is conveniently called “stop loss,” and forcibly extends the time on active duty when fresh meat is needed on the battlefield. In fairness, female soldiers too are subject to stop loss measures, but they still enjoy the military’s strenuous efforts to keep them out of harms way at the expense of the men. By the sex distribution of combat deaths, they are incredibly successful at it.

Yeah, the ridiculously high rape rate of women in the military shows they are just terribly concerned with coddling female soldiers. And those nefarious women are totally actively plotting to let men die in their place rather than dying as they should be.
And he also forgets to mention the fact that most casualties of war are civilians. See page 31 for statistics for "battle deaths" and "non-battle deaths".

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And for what? Oil profits? Imperialism? If we have ever had a war in defense of this country, rather than just a defense of our corporate interests, it has not been in a long, long time. Likely not in the average man’s lifetime.

All these wars are waged by an extreme minority of wealthy men, and paid for with the en masse suffering and death of much poorer ones.

Holy crap! He makes an actual point! If only the rest of the article wasn't a swamp of terrible!

Quote:

This reminds me of a story I read some years ago that ran in The Houston Press, a local political and entertainment rag for the Houston Area. The story was about a gay man who was being repeatedly beaten by his boyfriend. He tried at several local agencies to get help, but was more or less laughed out of all of them. The Press wrote the story with the angle that he was discriminated against because he was gay. Having worked in a field that often referred victims of domestic abuse to support organizations, I knew better. I wrote The Press and informed them that the man was discriminated against because he was male, not because he was gay. There were simply no services for men, but plenty for women, including lesbians, who received help regularly.

Williams, pretending to be “Reno,” called a Domestic Violence counseling line, not a battered women’s shelter. He told the counselor he’d been attacked by his wife and that he needed a place to go. The counselor explained to him that he’d called a counseling line and that she personally couldn’t arrange for shelter, but that if he called the men’s help line, they could arrange for him and his 6-year-old son to get free hotel accommodations at a location unknown to his wife. The counselor offered several times to connect him directly to the men’s help line.

Williams also told the counselor that he was thinking of calling the police. She told him she could connect him directly to the police, and would be happy to explain his situation to them and to make sure he reached an officer who specializes in domestic violence.

Ignoring all her offers to assist him in getting shelter and further help, Williams insisted that he wanted to be housed in a battered woman’s shelter instead. The counselor, naturally, was puzzled by this strange insistence on his part, and explained to him again that he could get free shelter at a local hotel for as long as he needed. She again offered to connect him directly to someone who could get him immediate help.

Having refused all of her offers of assistance, Reno abruptly ended the call — to the obvious distress of the counselor, who despite the patent weirdness of his behavior on the call had been patiently trying her best to get “Reno” the help he claimed he needed. (I suspect she sensed that his story was phony, but tried to help anyway in case it was true.)

This was all recorded, if you don't believe the summary feel free to click on the link and read the transcript.
This isn't to say the original situation didn't happen, just that Paul Elam and AVFM's claims of gross societal misandry rather than homophobia is a bit... dubious.

It’s abundantly clear that they didn’t want to acknowledge the truth, even if the truth meant that men like the one in their story would eventually find some help when needing it.

Once again, gender politics took precedence over all, and the real reasons for this persons, this man’s struggle, were hidden from public view.

Why am I even quoting this.

Quote:

The men’s movement, or at least a growing part of it, is about casting off all sense of expectation and obligation based solely on our sex. It is a fitting and appropriate response in a world where women are taught they are bound by nothing and can rightly choose whatever path they want in life. And it seems perfectly consistent that the unshackling of those expectations would include sexual orientation as much as it would anything else.

Women are no longer told they should just be housewives and baby factories! Misandry!
Because men are totes the oppressed ones, teh wimmenz have all the freedom and no responsibilities, I'm shedding man tears all over the place.

Quote:

Coincidentally, I see growth in two areas familiar to this particular article. Men are learning to say no to marriage and to being designated bullet catchers for a small group of avaricious bastards.

I think the best part is the fact that he groups these two things.

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We are learning to tell the world around us that no one will be allowed to shame us as men, nor will they be allowed to instruct us on what a man is.

Paul Elam translation: no one can tell us we're misogynists or creepy! That's shaming and wrong!
I feel like this link is somehow relevent. Not sure why. I suppose I'm just trying to include as many samples of Paul Elam being terrible as possible, but even still I'm not getting close to including all of them.

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And when we learn this lesson well enough, it will provide fertile ground to allow us to see the real resentments that fester against gay men- which boil down to one inescapable fact:

Gay men are and always have been resented because they provide no utility to women. They are literally born free of the constraining and egregiously burdensome expectations that heterosexual men are still raised to fulfill.

I... I'm just laughing at this because it's so patently ridiculous I can't even formulate a reply. I like how it's basically the opposite of reality, where lesbians are seen as challenges to men or "man-haters" just because they don't want to sleep with them.

Quote:

They are, in fact, the natural recipients of what many men in the men’s movement clamor for every day- freedom from the control of women and from the control of the state on women’s behalf.

Hear that gay men? You're better off than straight men because you don't want to have sex or a relationship with those nasty, awful, controlling women who oppress men via the state!

Quote:

It is my hope that this movement comes to invite and include gay men within the ranks, not as gays, but as men. But I fear that this will take some real time; time for the very few within our ranks that actually hate gays for being gay to either wise up or leave, and time for many gays to wake up and understand that ideologies, like feminism, based on hating men, will only produce self hatred, and worse.

Bolded for hahahaha.

Quote:

Right now the agenda for feminists includes sending men to the alter, and ultimately family courts, and to the combat zone.

This is the most ridiculous slippery slope argument I have ever seen, and that is including ones about gay marriage and bestiality.

Quote:

Men should work together to avoid both.

Wasn't that three things? I guess since he believes marriage and family courts are a compulsory procession of events, it could count as two.
Still laughing forever about the fact that he lumps marriage and going to war together. It's not a particularly mirthful laugh, it's the kind I reserve for facebook page arguments and internet comments sections.

Well, I wasted so much time dissecting that. And I just wanted to say, after a fairly long period of reading your comments HR, I find your sympathy for the Men's Rights Movement and the fact you seem to think that feminists are "almost as bad" disturbing. The fact that you linked this article as if it contained some kind of reasonable argument when whatever point it had was buried under three tons of idiotic bullshit was the last straw in my not saying anything about this. AVFM is not a fringe site in the Men's Rights Movement, it's pretty much the main one and it's full of toxic, just plain wrong articles. Freaking Cracked.com is better than it at dealing with sexism and gender (actually it's improved even more recently) and it's a humour site based on dick jokes for the most part. I'd never argue that feminism is perfect (especially since there's just so many feminisms) but aside from extremely fringe transphobic sites run by TERFs and actual "man-haters", I've never seen the level of hatred MRAs have towards women on ANY popular feminist site.

I don't think HR was actually endorsing the article, but yeah it was painfully horrible to read. I'd say the ratio of sensible statement to bullshit was about 9 to 1, or even less.

HR, please next time pull the relevant quotes and don't make us have to wade through so much shit._________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

Thank goodness we have A Voice For Men. Men have striven for in vain for all of recorded history for a voice. And it takes a true hero like Paul Elam to speak for us over the shrill soprano of institutionalized misandry that threatens to keep us silent.